Those games i can never come back to after I've "finished" it if they add content.

Don't want to relearn to git gud.

Celeste was much more of a grind for me (but very enjoyable). I didn't force myself to beat all the B or C sides as those felt very twitchy/memorization and less skill, but I did have to get all the strawberries, which is a lot more work than just beating a level.

I enjoyed it but agree with pwnsall, it is likely a game I won't replay. Although I did replay and 100% Cuphead again last year.

adding some more info, I have now finished all 3 DLCs for Nioh 2 and I can confirm that they are very solid, quite possibly the best part of the entire franchise. The level design is finally somewhat inspired (though still nowhere near the level of From Software) and all the new bosses are excellent, if rather hard. In general, there is a bit of a difficulty spike going from the main game, but nothing insurmountable, if you've managed to get to the DLCs you'll beat them eventually.

That being said, I'm not sure if I'd recommend buying them if you only own the base game, since the amount of new content is somewhat low. Each DLC contains one new region, but each of them is a bit smaller than ones from the main game. Despite that, there is still a huge amount of reused bosses, both from Nioh 1 and the main game - sure, these are fun, but I wouldn't really count them as new. However, if you buy the complete edition (like me), the whole thing is an extremely solid package.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy


GotG does one thing exceptionally well - truly pretty remarkable. Then it surrounds that piece with mediocrity or worse in most other aspects of the game, making it hard for me to land on an overall rating and to decide if I'd recommend the game or not.

GotG is 3rd person over-the-shoulder action game. You play as Star Lord, aka Peter Quill, the leader of the GotG team. You play through 15 chapters, which are entirely "on-rails": 95% of the time you are progressing through one defined path from Point A to Point B on foot, usually with you leading the rest of the GotG team. If you find a spot to deviate from the main path, every time it will take you through a very easy puzzle or platforming challenge, which at the end rewards you with currency to upgrade your weapons/abilities, or occasionally a cosmetic outfit for one of the team members, before dropping you back on the main path again. When you get to Point B you will sometimes fight a boss, always get a cutscene, then usually end up back at your Hub (the Guardians' spaceship) where you can talk with the team members before choosing to advance the plot and move to the next Point A. The other 5% of gameplay is space battles where you control the Guardians' ship and are shooting down enemies in space dogfights.

Great aspect: What GotG does best-in-class is writing and dialog. I found this game to be straight-up hilarious. The best parts are the banter among the characters as you traverse throughout the levels. Drax and Rocket have dozens and dozens of lines that had me laughing out loud. There is plenty of well written funny material in the cut scenes/scripted encounters as well. In both tone and quality, this is very much in-line with the GotG MCU movies - if you liked the first GotG movie, you will really get a blast out of the humor in this game. A lot of the game wasn't really compelling for other reasons I talk about below, but I still overall enjoyed my playthrough because of how clever and funny I found the teams' interactions.

Average aspects: The story is fine enough, although there are some pretty large plot armor and dues ex machina elements. One feature they spent some time implementing is player choice: throughout the game, you/Star Lord will be presented with different options, both for player dialog and in strategy (should the team do X or Y?). Some choices have no differences other than dialog, while others can impact how levels play out - usually in small ways, but two or three examples where gameplay is significantly different for 5-10 minutes based on what choice you make. However, everything eventually gets to the same place, and there is only one ending. One note regarding Marvel/the MCU: the character and voice actors are not the ones from the MCU movies - i.e. Chris Pratt is not Star Lord, Dave Bautista is not Drax, etc. This threw me for a loop at first, which was magnified by the fact that each character is written and voice- acted exactly like their MCU counterpart. I read online they decided not to use the MCU actors since the game isn't canon which makes sense I guess, but for the first part of my playthrough it messed with my mind to be playing as a Chris Pratt impersonator.

Sub-par aspects: The combat in this game is below average, bordering on tedious. Star Lord can perform very basic melee attacks (punch-punch-uppercut, dash-punch) and has his twin blasters that fire regular laser bullets + four types of element/magic ammo you unlock as you play. You can also issue commands to your four teammates to perform various attacks: you can have Gamora jump-slice one enemy for large damage, or bounce back and forth for small strikes vs. several enemies; you can have Rocket throw a vortex grenade to suck in enemies, or another grenade to just damage in an area, etc. Each of the teammates unlocks 4 different attacks/abilities, meaning in theory you're juggling between 20 different special attacks and cooldowns, plus additional environmental options (Drax can throw explosive crates and boulders, Groot can cause an earthquake+vine attack under certain terrain etc.). Unfortunately, none of it ever feels like it matters. Enemies are tremendous bullet sponges, but almost never seem to pose any real danger. They just take a while to whittle away on. There also was never any strategy to any fight, other than occasionally an enemy will have a colored shield that you need to hit with the correct colored magic bullet to take out. Even bosses felt the same, just shoot for 5 minutes while commanding your team to use their special moves when they were off cooldown. The game consists of waking down a (very pretty/very well drawn hallway), entering a room and shooting enemies for 3-4 minutes, getting some (very good) dialog during after the shooting, then moving to the next room. Lastly, the game was surprisingly buggy for a AAA title. Star Lord can scan objects with his mask, but I consistently found the lock-on feature a little off on dozens and dozens of scanable things around the environment. Never so bad that it made it unplayable, but enough to make me wonder over and over how this got out of QA. Further, the game straight-up crashed for me 4-5 times while I played it. It was never a huge deal and restarting/replaying always got me through fine, but again, it's not something I've encountered much (anywhere?) in other games. (I was playing the PS5 version).

The game is 1.5 years old at this point and still priced at $60. My PS says I only played for 9 hours, which feels short to me, I would have guessed it took closer to 15 hours. I'd say I'm like a middle-of-the-road MCU fan: I have seen most, but not all, of the MCU movies, and I really liked GotG #1, and thought #2 was OK. I have never read any of the comic books. Given all that, I did enjoy a lot of my time with the game because of how good the writing and dialog was. But, I got the game as a gift; I have a hard time recommending anyone other than a true GotG/Marvel super-fan to plunk down AAA cash given how many other games that are more of a complete package are out there. If it shows up in a PS+/streaming package somewhere though, the humor is worth plodding through the boring combat. (If you do play, I would recommend just setting the difficulty to the easy setting to speed up the combat. I played at normal, and I didn't get the feeling that playing at harder difficulty would unlock more strategy/make the combat more fun, I feel like you'd just die more often or take even longer to whittle down the opponent health.)

7.5/10

Steelrising

Ok, so this is a weird one. On paper, Steelrising would be a very strong contender to the title of "worst soulslike ever". I'm not going to dissect all the numerous issues I have with this game, so just list from the top of my head:
- bugs
- jankyness
- bad level design (it feels like the game often fails to "speak its own language")
- very low enemy variety (plus all minibosses are just regular enemies with boss healthbars)
- completely broken balance
- boring implementation of metroidvania elements
- bad character progression (I maxxed out my weapon and main damage stat halfway through the game)
- some truly inexplicable design decisions, for example, you cannot slow walk when locked on, or the fact that there are slopes everywhere despite game engine's clear inability to handle them

And yet, despite all of that, the game somehow manages to be... fun? It is really hard to explain why, but I suspect that the difficulty played a part in it. I mentioned completely broken balance - well, the thing is, it seems like almost every single build is broken in one way or another. For reference, out of main bosses only the final one managed to kill me and I barely every died in between the bosses.

This is by a large marging the easiest soulslike I have ever played and it really feels like a power fantasy, as opposed to every other game in the genre. Would I want every soulslike to be like that? Of course not, but seeing this once was a breath of fresh air.

Other than that, the world is just a really cool place to be in, even with mediocre writing and quest design - the idea of robots in wigs partaking in French Revolution was a great starting point.

However, there is unfortunately one final nail to the game's coffin - it really overstays it welcome. I was having genuine fun over the first 10-12hrs, but the game took me 21 (I did all the sidequests, but there was basically zero repetition in that) and the last few of them really felt like a drag, especially with enemy variety being so low.

So, yeah, if the game was shorter, I think I could recommend it to soulslike fans despite all its issues, but as it is I cannot give it more than 5.5/10.

Hellpoint

alright, so given that I've written this in the other thread:

I really didn't think that I would end up finishing it, but... here we are. While the above does mostly hold true, shortly after writing this I decided to try a different weapon (turns out the one I used was basically the worst in the game in terms of fun) and managed to power through the whole thing.

And, once you get at least a bit used to all the jankiness, it does get better. The atmosphere and visuals are truly spectacular throughout the whole thing, even better in some later areas.

The level design... I'm not sure if get less complicated later or, or did I just get used to navigating them, but it becomes significantly easier to navigate them. I think it's probably the former, since there aren't as many secrets later on (it sounds like a bad thing, but it's really not, first few areas were filled with them to an absurd degree).

Bosses don't get much better, but some later ones at least have some cool visual designs and moves, fighting them is still a pain with all the jank, though.

One thing I did not mention is how the progression works, I won't go into too much detail, but I really like it, the game has some really neat ideas - for example, the fact that instead of upgrading your weapon, you are upgrading a damage type chip that you can then move between weapons. Or the fact that there are no consumables, they usually just end up cluttering your inventory.

All in all, despite all it's flaws, if you are in the market for an indie soulslike, mostly focus on atmosphere and visuals and don't mind a fair bit of jank, I could - very cautiosly - recommend Hellpoint. And I will be definitely looking forward to the next project by the devs. 6/10, but without its atmosphere it would be more like 2/10. Also, if you do end up trying it, do not use a weapon called "Column"

oh, and one more thing, while I did beat the final boss for bad ending, I technically didn't roll credits, as I also unlocked the true final boss, but that fight just looks miserable and I won't be doing it in any near future

Wo Long - one of the easiest Soulslike game. It's not a complete pushover as some bosses were troublesome, but I beat a lot of them first time. The parrying mechanic is central to combat, but it isn't quite as intense as Sekiro's swordfights. There's also less movement and variety to the combat. You're fixed firmly to the ground, not swinging around using a grappling hook.

The biggest problem with the game is a lack of enemy types, which does make the gameplay feel overly repetitive. Hopefully the DLC will address this because the core combat is still quite fun. Spellcasting is the clearest differentiator from Sekiro and adds a dimension to the combat.

Salt and Sacrifice

As a big fan of Salt and Sanctuary, I was quite hyped for the sequel. But then I've heard that it will incorporate many elements from Monster Hunter (a franchise I really dislike). Then, the first reviews started coming in and they were mediocre at best, so I decided to skip it. However, earlier this year I was replaying Salt and Sanctuary yet again (there is a new fan-made balancing patch, it's really cool) and I thought why not give the sequel a shot.

The biggest change from the original is the main gameplay loop, taken, indeed, straight from Monster Hunter - rather than exploring and fighting bosses, you are hunting Mages across the levels, until you corner them and have a proper showdown. It sounds like a massive change, but it really does not make that much of a difference, except for adding an annoying additional step of running around levels while chasing your prey.

The combat system and progression are very similiar to the original, I've heard that there were some issues with stunlocks from enemies at launch, but it seems like they were patched out by now. The combat is still fun and satisfying, except for some spammy Mages. The skilltree is more coherent than in the first game, which should be a welcome change, but it makes it kinda... boring? You just know exactly what to expect from each branch. The biggest here change is removal of the magic system, which was replaced by something like weapons arts from Dark Souls. Again, sounds good on paper, but I don't feel like it was implemented very well, I put a ton of points into the equivalent of faith stat and was barely using them anyway.

Exploration is a mixed bag. Rather than one world, you are accessing 5 different levels from your main hub, kinda like Demon Souls. Those levels are pretty cool and cleverly constructed, with tons of shortcuts and skillgates, but each level has only one entry point, which means that they are all constructed in a same way, as a loop around that entry point, which gets repetative.
Next up, bosses. There are 2 types of them:
- normal bosses like from the first game. These are fine, but felt a little underwhelming, not sure why - maybe they were a bit too easy?
- Mages - these are the bosses that you have to hunt, you also get an option to infinitely re-fight them to grind their drops (fortunately, that is only if you want all of their equipment, you don't have to grind otherwise). I would again split them into 2 types:
> ranged Mages - super annoying, they rely on massive aoes and tons of projectiles, making the fights feel more like a bullet hell than anything else. Fortunately, they tend to have low health, so I would typically just tank them with heavy armor
> meele Mages - these make up the best content of the game, most of them are fast, hit hard and are really fun to learn

Finally, there are some really baffling design decision that felt poorly thought out. For example, the fact that you have to harvest materials to refill your estus - sure, it's super easy to do that, but why? Also, I mentioned earlier that there is only one entry point for each level. While there are checkpoint all over the map, they only work to respawn you when you die. If you quit the game, you'll have to re-start from scratch again. And sure, there are a lot of clever shortcuts etc. but... why? These are just some examples, there is more stuff like this.

And maybe just one sentence on the atmosphere and plot - they aren't terrible, but a bit bland, especially compared to the original.

So, to sum up, this game is... fine, I guess? It's definitely not as bad as many reviews and disappointed fans made it out to be, but it is also significantly worse than Salt and Sanctuary in basically every way. 7/10, if you're the fan of the original then it's probably worth a play, otherwise there are much better games in this genre

Resident Evil 4

Solid remake of the series, with much improved graphics and QTE's of the initial version, replaced with real time action, which was a welcome addition. Puzzles and exploration are almost non-existent but setting is interesting for a zombie game. Instead of infested city, we have a village and Zombie farmers going at you with machetes, axes , sickles and hayforks.

Then you have Castle, filled with traps and few other locations, which i will not reveal, to not ruin your fun.

Review in numbers, 9/10 easily.

Is that your first time playing RE4?

RE4 the original was awesome. Haven't bought the remake because I don't want to tamper with my memory of it.

It's a shame that the RE4 characters were so lifeless and dull in their movie versions.

RE4 was one of the few “traditional” games where the Wii control scheme actually elevated the gameplay experience. Aiming the controller like a real gun felt amazing, took me right back to playing House of the Dead at the arcade.

Celeste (8/10)

Finally got around to playing it again since they added back to GamePass. Had to start from the beginning, but was able to beat the main story in about 8 hours. Now I'll be revisiting from time to time to try and at least get all of the strawberries.

Arcade Paradise 9/10

Essentially your dad gives you a laundromat to run to teach you responsibility but you're like f this I want an arcade instead. You grind your way through the running of the place, buying new arcade games - that are all playable retro games with achievements - to keep making money and improving the arcade. A decent storyline goes along with this progression. Once you feel it start to get a bit grindy and wonder 'is this it..?' the game picks up quickly and cruises from there.

A lot of the games are extremely fun to play, but a few are glitchy or just way too hard - pool and air hockey I'm looking at you - but there are like 25-30 total games you can play to increase their popularity and thus your income. The majority of games are either blatant ripoffs of old games (arkanoid, space invaders), remakes similar to old games (zombat 2, line terror) or games made specifically for the arcade (blockchain, stack overload).

There are enough achievements and extra music - which is spectacular btw - to upgrade that you'll spend 40-50 hours on the game without even thinking. Unfortunately a few well-documented bugs (outlined in the Reddit thread that the developer is active in) make 100%ing it after you finish the storyline impossible. Still a great game that I wouldn't be surprised gets a more polished sequel down the road. Definitely recommend.

Asterigos: Curse of the Stars is an action-adventure game with some light RPG and soulslike elements - as you can probably guess from my previous reviews, the last bit is what got me intersted in it. You play as Hilde, a young girl sent on a mission to find out what happened to Northwind Legion, a military unit commanded by her father, that was sent to a mysterious city of Aphes and then disappeared.

The story and the setting are definitely one of the game's main strenghts. The city is a fantasy version of ancient Greek polis, with a lot of politics and interesting characters, but also magic and monsters. The writing is very solid and is really elevated by excellent voice acting, especially from the main heroine. Overall, following the plot of the game is very enjoyable from start to finish. One point of criticism here - the game feature A LOT of lore, be it in a form of notes or optional dialogues. Some of it is very interesting, however, the majority feels like filler content. Because of that, I eventually gave up an started skipping most of it. I wish they would cut the amount of lore by at least half and only left the best stuff, I really didn't need to read 5 pages about some random soldier's daily routine.

Another strong element of the game - a very unexpected one in this sort of AA game - is pacing. Most of these struggle to keep the momentum and, at least to me, feel boring and repetative near the end. That is not the case here, the game starts out a bit slow, but it gets better and better. Last few areas I got to explore were actually my favourite. It took me 28hrs (significantly longer than I thought) to beat the game and it never felt like a chore, unlike, for example, last 1/3 of Steelrising I reviewed earlier. Impressively, the difficulty is also very well balanced - I played on Normal and at the beginning the game was quite easy, but the difficulty increased very steadily, and late game was decently challenging.

Level and world design is where the soulslike influence is most prelevant. The entire world is interconnected (not as brilliantly as Dark Souls 1, but it was clearly an inspiration) and the levels feature tons of shortcuts and secrets. Early levels did feel a little bland, but some of the late game ones were really brilliant.

Next, the combat. It looks very good on paper, unfortunately, for me it didn't really work out all that great. You have a choice of 6 weapons (all available from the start) and you always have 2 of them equipped, meaning that you can, in theory, mix attacks from both of your weapons into some epic combos. The reality is, I was mainly using just one weapon, for a number of reasons - mainly because upgrade materials were quite scarce, so my main weapon was always several upgrade levels above my secondary one. There are special moves and skills, that I did use a lot, but the control scheme was designed for 2 weapons, so when I only used one, it felt very simplistic.

Bosses were definitely not the main focus of the game, but they are solid enough. Only one of them I would call bad, others were ranging from decent to quite good. They are also rather easy, which I think is a good thing - if you're unable to design a captivating From Soft-style encounter, do not make it hard like in their games, as it will quickly become frustrating. A nice bonus are 10 (!!) secret bosses that show up all around the world once you reach a certain point of the game. While most of these are technically reskins of normal enemies, they have completely unique, great movesets and they really forced me to utilize the combat system more.

Speaking of normal enemies, they are quite varied and well designed, but I have 2 minor issues with them. First of all, they tend to be quite damage-spongy, even on Normal difficulty (I heard it's much worse on Hard). Secondly, some of them have movesets that are very hard to read, which is not good in a game with some soulslike elements.

So, to sum up, despite some issues I really enjoyed the game, it is well made and worth the time. It feels like a good point of entry for someone who wants to try out what the soulslike genre is about without dealing with too much repetition, or a nice breather for a soulslike veteran like me. I'd give it 8.5/10 and can recommend to pretty much anyone.

^oh, and one more, rather minor issue with Asterigos that I forgot to mention: there seem to be a couple of ideas that the devs seemingly started to implement early, but then gave up on them. For example, very early you get to make a very meaningful choice that can pretty much impact the entire situation in one of the city's districts. So, I was constantly on the lookout for more similiar choices, but I don't think than anyting as impactful showed up ever again (unless I missed it). Other example is metroidvania-style exploration - early on, you gain access to new elemental damage types, that open up new areas in previously explored levels. This, again, never shows up later, even if you are told to revisit old levels, there will typically just be something like a new open gate.

These are not huge issues, but they just feel quite weird and might be a sign of a troubled development.

Super Mario 64 10/10

I only finished playing all the way through it for the first time about a month ago. Yes, it came out over 25 years ago, and yes, it's the most recognizable video game franchise in the world, but let me explain... I always kinda knew about it growing up, played through a few levels, even watched through some playthroughs of levels on youtube, but I was never really interested even though i was pretty heavily into video games starting all the way back in the 90s. I was always more into rpgs like zelda, final fantasy for adventure games. The main reason being, what's so fun about a platform game where you can only run and jump around? I wanna level up, gain new abilities, and such, which none of that is in mario 64.

Boy, was I misguided. This game is EASILY a top 5 game of all time for me. In the year 2023, I can only say that playing through this game felt like a whole new religious experience, and completely unlike any other game I've played. Everything about the game is just epic. I mean, the different levels, the challenge, the music, of course all that is great...but it's just the vibe of the game that really sets it apart. It's not necessarily that platforming in 3d is that "fun", but exploring the different worlds, being somewhat forced to stay in each level to collect all the stars and hear the music over and over again, it took me getting to like 30 or 40 stars for it to start settling in that I was experiencing something beyond epic. After that one sand level, I just remember being fascinated by the vibe of it and spent the better part of the next two days still feeling immersed in it even though I had put down the game the previous morning. Simply put, playing through this game felt more like watching a really long enjoyable movie that intertwined with your mood in real life more than it was playing a game. Uncanny...

So if somehow you haven't played this game, don't be like me and ignore it just because you think it was just a boring mainstream platformer title that has no depth to it. The depth goes beyond the gameplay and the (once good, but now mediocre) graphics. Now having played through some of the later 3d mario games I can't say I feel the same joy from those games. But Super Mario 64 is exceptional, and is totally deserving of it's legendary status.

Hell yeah.

Nice review! I remember I 100% it like 5-6 years ago and thought during it that this might be the last time I ever 100% it. Now I no longer think that will be the case, Ill pick it up again sometime in the next 10 years.

don't wanna write another wall of text, so just a short copy-paste of my steam review for Blasphemous 2:

the first Blasphemous is one of my favourite games of all times, so I was very excited for the sequel, but tbh I was just a little bit disappointed. Sure, mechanically it's a straight up improvement, but in spite of that (or maybe partially because of that) it does not have the same extremely opressive atmosphere as the original.

It makes sense in terms of lore, since we defeated the Miracle in the true-true ending, but the games ends up feeling a little bit... bland when compared to the first one.

Plus, the difficulty curve is all over the place, the game felt super easy for like 90% of it and then a certain (mandatory) late game boss was honestly one of the hardest things I've ever faced in a video game. The only thing in the first Blasphemous that came close to this difficulty was 3-phase Crisanta in ng+, but it was optional, on harder difficulty and still significantly easier than that

Don't get me wrong, the game is still very good and definitely worth a play, but while the first one was easy 10/10 for me, this is more like 8/10.

Lies of P

If you follow the soulslike scene, you surely heard of this game by now. It came from an unknown studio (that apparently only made some random mmo before) and made quite a fuss, due to unprecented level of quality, while very strictly adhering to From Soft formula. One thing is clear: this is an excellent game, in my opinion the only soulslike that is actually comparable to From Soft titles, with one caveat though: the game is very, very, very hard, to the point where I believe that there will be a non-trivial amount of people who won't be able to finish it. It is significantly harder than any other soulslike, with only games reaching comparable level of difficulty being Sekiro and Nioh 2 DLCs - but these were still easier imo.

So, where does this insane difficulty comes from? The gameplay is often referred to as "Bloodborne meets Sekiro", which is accurate, but only tells half the story. The game not only gives you defensive options in a form of parry and dodge, but it kinda requires you to use both - AND you have to figure out yourself when each option is best at any given time. This additional level of decision-making was, up to a point, just too much for me and I thought that I might be forced into giving up on the game.

However, at around half-way point through the game, after spending 4,5hrs on a boss (for comparison, Malenia in ER took me 1,5hrs), the game finally clicked for me. After that, everything went rather smoothly and the last 3 bosses, which were supposedly the hardest in the game, I beat under 30mins each.

It is also worth noting that there are some options to mitigate the difficulty - namely, there are AI summons for most bosses, plus I've heard that throwable items are extremely powerful. I didn't use them, though, so no idea if they actually make the game more accessible.

To not make this too long, let me summarize some of my other thoughts on the game below:
- the combat is amazing, I think that some might argue it's better than in From Soft games other than Sekiro. My only issue is the balancing between dodging and deflecting - yes, you are theoretically forced to use both, but the first one is so much easier, even if less satisfying. I've even seen some youtubers brute-force the game with dodging only, which wouldn't happen if deflecting was better balanced - it needs either a bigger window, a better reward or less insanely delayed attacks from the enemies
- the bosses are also great, the best ones can definitely compete with From roster. There are, however, a few weaker ones and one that is truly terrible. 95% of difficulty comes from them (normal enemies are quite easy), so you can expect to get to know them really well
- I've seen some people praise the level design, but it's the weakest part of the game in my opinion. It's not bad, but there are only 3 levels (out of 11 major + many sublevels) that could stand the comparison to From, the rest is quite bland and forgettable. The game is also extremely linear, I typically don't have a problem with that, but at least one major branching path would have been nice
- The presentation is fantastic. Graphics and music are on point, but what really stands out is the story/lore. They somehow managed to combine From-style mysterious world and deep lore in items descriptions with a more straighforward, emotional storytelling. This is the only soulslike game where I actually felt emotionally invested in the story without having to watch lore videos on youtube
- All the progression systems are good, levelling and damage scaling is basically taken straight out of a From Soft games, but there are additional layers of upgrades to keep things interesting. There is also a really cool crafting system, where you can combine different weapon handles with different blades, to manipulate movesets and scaling. I didn't play around with it too much, but seems to have a lot of potential. Some things clearly need balancing, but I'm sure that the devs will work that out

So, yeah, not much more to say, the best non-From Soft soulslike on the market, 9/10, but beware of the difficulty, definitely not recommended as an entry point into the genre

I've just started Lies of P, don't have a meaningful impression of it yet. One thing though that I have found immediately irritating - there's no explanation of the stats. Some I'm familiar with because of other Souls games, others are baffling. Like levelling Motivity and Technique increases the same stats by the same amount. They obviously can't be the same, so why is there zero in-game explanation of what these stats do? One shouldn't have to turn to the internet to understand basic game mechanics.

tbh I didnt even notice that, but yeah, a bit of an oversight for sure. Shouldn't turn you away from an otherwise great game, though. Fwiw, Motivity is strength and Technique is dex, works the same as in souls games

Alright, time for another review, I'm gonna keep this one shorter, since I don't like to dwell one the negatives too much

Lords of the Fallen is a reboot of a... not very succesful soulslike game from 2014, created by a new studio from my country (Poland). The game managed to generate quite a bit of a hype thanks to an excellent marketing campaign, unfortunately, it does not live up to it at all.

There is a lot to like about LotF and I'm sure that there is a good game hidden in there somewhere, but it is buried under the number of terrible design decisions and an overall lack of polish.

The first impression of the game should be pretty good, as it looks quite good, provided that it runs ok - I did encounter some performance issues, but apparently for many people it's running straight up terribly, especially on consoles. I played on an upper-mid-tier gaming pc and set all details to min, so it run fine, but there were some fights and areas that had heavy stutter.

The aesthethic is also pretty cool, it's a mix of a classic soulslike dark fantasy and a fair bit of body horror, though it does get a bit boring by the end.

Now, onto those terrible design decision - I don't think I've ever seen a game with such a big number of them, some examples:
- areas are aburdly hard due to enemy density and placement, it feels like every single encounter is meant to screw you in the worst way imaginable. They patched it, apparently, but it's still pretty bad
- most unique thing about the game is a gimmick with 2 planes of existance that you can switch between, but the "death" plane has even more, endlessly respawning (!) enemies, so you just want to get out of it as fast as possible
- on the contrast, bosses are just inexplicably easy, I typically die a lot to bosses, here I was first or second trying almost everything. There might be some cool designs, but I barely got to experience them
- the world design is inspired by the first Dark Souls, but it feels like they stopped half way with that idea. The areas are somehow interconnected, but not in a very smart way, plus you get the warp from the start, so you never really feel like the world design has any meaning
- all weapons within one class share the same moveset, meaning that you get like 10 weapons in the entire games, just with different skins and stats
- the enemy variety is abysmal, you fight the same mobs with different stats (but usually not even different skins) througout the whole game

I could go on, but let's just leave it at that - this game really does not want you to enjoy it. If you are a masochist who enjoys getting swarmed by hordes of basic enemies (aka, a Dark Souls 2 fan), you might have some fun here, otherwise it's a 4/10.

I am liking Lies of P more than Elden Ring. The latter's combat is a step back after Sekiro; it feels slow and plodding. Lies of P is far more Sekiro-like, although parrying and dodging feels less reliable.

LoP actually made me come back to Sekiro and finally finish it (I started 2 years ago and quit around Fountainhead Palace), so the parallels are definitely there. Not gonna write a review for Sekiro, but, I mean, it's obviously very close to 10/10.

Coming back to my usual programming, aka reviewing every soulslike on the market, today I wanted to talk about Thymesia. After a fantastic experience with Lies of P and a pretty bad one with Lords of the Fallen, I was expecting this one to be rather middling and, well, this is pretty much what I got.

Thymesia is an indie soulslike with various inspirations, mostly coming from Bloodborne (aesthethics) and Sekiro (combat). First of all, I wanted to mention that it is very short - to me, it is not a problem, since I generally prefer shorter games, but you can finish this one in around 3 hours, while finishing everything in the game took me less than 10. This is reflected in the game's price, but I can imagine still being disappointing to some.

Moving on to the game itself, I have to start with its most important (and succesful) aspect, which is combat. It is quite good, excellent at times, drawing heavy inspirations from Sekiro with its deflections system, but also bringing a couple of new ideas to the table. One new idea that was pretty interesting was the fact that each enemy has 2 healthbars stacked on top of each other. Both are vulnurable to different types of your attacks and the "bottom" one can only be damaged after damaging the "top" one, and the "top" one regenerates quite quickly, so you are forced to constantly switch between different attacks.

In fact, my only small issue with the combat might be the fact that they actually added too many systems, which can be confusing, plus some of them seem clearly inferior. For example, you have a completely separate system for countering enemies' special attacks (kinda like burst counter in Nioh 2), but enemies, including bosses, use those attacks very rarely, so leveling this system feels like a bit of a waste.

Burst counter is not the only thing borrowed from Nioh 2, as Thymesia also has a very similiar mission-based structure, where side missions are placed in the already explored levels, though sometimes in some unexplored parts. Given that the game is very short already, this recycling feels quite cheap, tbh.

Everything besides the combat in this game is simply middling. The level design is servicable, but not great - especially the last level (of only 3 main ones) feels a bit unfinished, with lots of long, empty hallways.

Bosses are fine, but most of the fun in fighting them can be reduced to how good the combat feels. Plus, there is one that it truly awful - who in the world thought that "let's remake Ancient Wyvern from DS3, but harder and 5 times longer" would be a good pitch? At least it's not mandatory.

I could go an about how average everything else is, but at the end of the day it boils down to the fact that this entire games simply feels like a showcase of its combat system. It is quite good, but not good enough to elevate it to a higher mark than strong 6/10.

I am, however, quite curious as to what will the devs do next. They have some solid foundations on their hands, though maybe they should consider implementing the combat system in a different, less bland IP.